{"id":21890,"date":"2018-02-27T00:37:33","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T13:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/?p=21890"},"modified":"2018-02-27T00:37:33","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T13:37:33","slug":"shape-with-a-feather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/shape-with-a-feather\/","title":{"rendered":"Shape with a Feather, not a Bludgeon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image courtesy www.freeimages.com \/ herbert van der wegen<\/p><\/div>\n

There’s a bit of a rambling backstory to this article which I would omit if it weren’t central to the subject. Since that’s the case, I’ll have to ask you to bear with me for a bit.<\/p>\n

I was musing in the shower this morning of the significance of the Australian Music TV show, “Countdown” (1970s and 80s) and its impact on Australian Culture, and came to the conclusion that it may have been even more profound than even the many fans of the show acknowledge, in three fundamentally-important ways.<\/p>\n

Thought 1<\/h3>\n

First, by throwing together our domestic performers and the best and most-popular artists from overseas, the show challenged our domestic performers to step up – and celebrated them when they did so. These were the formative years for artists such as The Little River Band, AC\/DC, Air Supply, INXS, and Men At Work, to name but a few. How many of those have you heard of?<\/p>\n

By showing that local artists could compete with the best, when on a level playing field, the youth generation of the 1970s began to discard the Cultural Cringe that had afflicted Australian Culture since the country was first established as a British penal colony. As that generation matured over the next decade, they carried an attitude of “we’re as good as anyone else” with them into every sphere of activity.<\/p>\n

That bastion of conservatism, Politics, remains the last hold-out for many dinosaurian attitudes of the past, but even there they are in the minority. So threatened do the traditionalists feel that a populist minority sub-culture has arisen to foam at the mouth, demand that the clock be wound back, and the tides be forced to retreat on command. To date, they have encountered markedly little success. Make no mistake, most of the adherents are good people who have become frightened of a world they no longer fully understand and over which they no longer perceive even the illusion of control; they see only the virtues of old that have been lost, without appreciating that for every loss there has been a greater gain.<\/p>\n

Thought 2<\/h3>\n

Of course, the claim to fame that most people cite for Countdown – and that most critics dispute – is the allegation that they discovered many famous acts. Abba, Blondie, John Cougar (Mellencamp), Culture Club, Meatloaf, Boz Scaggs, the Motels – all had their first major success in Australia and Countdown was usually Australia’s first exposure to them. Other artists who succeeded despite little or no radio exposure – in part due to appearances on the show – include XTC, Elvis Costello, The Specials, Joe Jackson, The Cure, The Ramones, The Cars, The Bay City Rollers, Foreigner, Graham Parker & The Rumour, Daryl Hall & John Oates, The Police, Adam & The Ants, Simple Minds, Devo, and Duran Duran.<\/p>\n

That might not be a complete ‘who’s who’ of popular music from the era, but it comes darned close!<\/p>\n

Was Countdown the only show presenting what are now known as Videos or Video Clips? No. Sounds Unlimited, to name just one rival, was longer (hours) in airtime and so presented a broader palette each week. But their reach was tiny (though concentrated) in comparison to that of the national broadcaster, and they were less successful at spotting “The Next Big Thing”. Their time-slot – early Saturday Mornings – also limited their impact.<\/p>\n

In fact, there is only one act that I can remember having any significant success during the Countdown era without ever appearing on the show (and often appearing there before anywhere else) – Midnight Oil – and that was because they refused to appear on it for ideological reasons; they considered it too commercially-driven (despite it being on the only non-commercial network, and their being happy to appear on other shows that were<\/em> supported by advertising. No, that makes no sense to me, either.<\/p>\n

That’s a huge impact on popular culture – something akin to the impact that MTV had on the US when it started – but Countdown was on the air in 1975.<\/em><\/p>\n

More importantly, “Molly” Meldrum, the host and co-producer of the show, who hand-picked the artists and sometimes the songs that were to be performed, developed a reputation as having a “golden ear”. If he said something was going to be a hit, it often was – and record companies were quick to notice the pronouncements, often putting additional promotional dollars behind the artists in the UK and US, sometimes after all but giving up on them.<\/p>\n

In part, the global impact of that great long list of artists can be traced back to Countdown. It became known internationally<\/em> as THE show to do in Australia, and that helped put the country on the global “map.” Even those critics that I mentioned don’t dispute this; only the size<\/em> of the contribution remains open to debate. But it’s worth pointing out that those critics are frequently contradicted by the artists themselves in interviews.<\/p>\n

Both of these effects are things that I had realized before, and have written about – see, for example, Pickin’ and Choosin’<\/a> from almost a year ago (March 2016) (where does<\/em> the time go?).<\/p>\n

Thought 3<\/h3>\n

But my third thought grew out of the combination of awareness of the first two, plus the geographic sensitivity arising from the Diversity Of Seasons<\/a> series, and, especially, part 1 of that series.<\/p>\n

You see Australia became known globally as a trend-setter. Groundbreaking groups and artists through to the 2000s continually cite Australian acts that preceded them as inspiration, or consider their style as a reaction to such trends. It sometimes seems as though an Australian was in the forefront of every major pop-culture development of the last 50 years, but never more-so than during the Countdown era and the decade or so that followed it.<\/p>\n